US starts H1N1 vaccination

WASHINGTON - HEALTH care workers lined up on Tuesday to be innoculated against swine flu as the United States began a massive campaign aiming to vaccinate 250 million people against the illness by year's end.

'The H1N1 vaccine is being rolled out right now,' Norman Edelman, a professor of preventive medicine and internal medicine at the State University of New York and spokesman for the American Lung Association, told AFP.

'The highest priority group are health care workers and, as we speak, the vaccine is flowing to health care workers,' said Mr Edelman, whose organisation is being used by US health authorities to coordinate the vaccination campaign.

The health care workers on the frontlines of the ambitious program will get a squirt up the nose, not a shot in the arm, as the nasal spray vaccine has rolled off production lines ahead of the injectable variety.

Some 600,000 doses of swine flu vaccine have been shipped out to public health authorities in 21 states and four large cities - Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Washington.

The vaccines are being distributed by the federal government to 'various localities who have determined their own vaccination strategy,' Mr Edelman said. -- AFP